


Las Playas

by alexamonster



Category: New Girl
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 20:58:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexamonster/pseuds/alexamonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shameless hiatus Mexican road-trip fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Las Playas

            Pulling herself back into wakefulness in that moment is harder than anything she’s ever done in her life. She feels like she could sleep for a century. She keeps her eyes closed. Savors the moment. Her bare feet are propped up at an odd angle on the dashboard of her car. The air rushing in through the open passenger’s side window catches tendrils of her hair, trailing the ends over her nose and cheeks, getting caught in her day-old, tacky lip gloss. A slow ache spreads from her right hip, meeting the shooting pain from the base of her neck somewhere along her spine. It’s warm—her car’s air conditioning hasn’t worked since Reagan was president—but not too warm. The breeze from the window cools the sweat beading on her forehead and upper lip. The song playing on the radio assures her once more that this is definitely not a dream.

            Nick is singing along, under his breath for her benefit: “I’d been married a long time ago, where did you come from, where did you go…” She opens one eye. His left hand is on the steering wheel, fingers tapping, right arm in the air, fist pumping. It’s almost a thing of beauty that he’s not yet tired of the song.

            If she’d been in her right mind when they left the wedding she would have insisted on stopping by the loft for basic supplies: toothbrushes; extra underwear; at the _very least_ a CD that contained more than one song about a mysterious, apparently multiple-wedding-ruining man.

            Nick has the red bandanna he’d bought at the first gas station they stopped at when they got to Mexico wrapped across his forehead like Josh Brolin in _The Goonies_. He’s wearing his white shirt from the wedding, still, sleeves pushed to his elbows and unbuttoned halfway down his chest. The tie is long gone, probably stuffed into the trunk with the rest of the items they’d deemed “non-essential” during their inventory.

            Last she’d checked, at the end of her driving shift, they were mere hours away from their most recent destination: Acapulco. It had been her turn to pick. Nick had last suggested they stop at a bar claiming to have the best tequila in Mexico. They sat at the bar together and Jess thought about how odd it felt, sitting on the same side of a bar with Nick, his knee pressing hard against hers. Nick drank shot after shot of tequila, determined to get a shot with the worm, progressively getting more and more domestic with Jess, who was still nursing her first glass of pink wine.

            He was more on her barstool than his own at that point, head on her shoulder, arm curled softly yet determinedly around her waist, fingertips grazing her hipbone.

            “I think I found the worm, honey.”

            She had kissed his forehead, sticky with sweat and decided then that she would be totally fine with however long this road trip turned out to be.

            She’s just been sitting there, staring at him with one eye barely open. She still is having a difficult time believing that they really did just up and drive to Mexico after Cece’s non-wedding.

            Those had been fun phone calls.

            Cece didn’t care, obviously, as long as Jess promised to listen for at least an hour or so while she got all her Schmidt problems talked out of her system. Jess spent one memorable night curled in the backseat of the car nodding though she knew Cece couldn’t see her, phone propped between her shoulder and ear, Nick’s body curved around hers impossibly, his mouth open, breathing hotly against her neck in sleep. He did this thing, she’d found, where his fingers toy gently with whatever they’re closest to in sleep; a nervous tic. His fingertips brushed repeatedly against her hipbone, tugging at the hem of her cheap “Visit Sunny Cancun!” T-shirt.

            Schmidt and Winston were harder—it took promises of souvenirs, liquor, and future long road trips to Mexico for themselves to placate them into staying put at the loft and just letting Nick and Jess _have this one_ for crying out loud. They’d been buying souvenirs as they went; a bottle of tequila that for sure had a worm in it (they checked), an air-brushed T-shirt they had made at a stand for Winston that proclaimed “BROWN LIGHTNING” above a neon yellow lightning bolt, and an extremely fancy electric pleasuring device purchased on a very memorable jaunt through the shadiest sex shop Jess had ever seen.

            At the last moment, Jess had slipped a surprisingly cute lacy nightgown onto the counter. Nick’s eyebrows shot up and he grinned at her as she handed her credit card over to the bored woman behind the counter.

            “Jess!”

            “It’s a little different than my usual comfy pajamas,” she admitted, taking the bag with Schimdt’s horrible present and her nightie in it, and leading Nick by the hand to the door, “but I don’t have anything good to sleep in.” She tugged his ear down and pressed her mouth to it as she whispered the next part in her best 1940’s crime noir voice, “And anyways, it’s just the sort of thing Jessica Night would wear, doncha think, Detective?”

            They barely made it back to the car fast enough, Nick’s teeth at her collar bone and his hand spreading across her lower back, pulling her so close the breath had come rushing out of her lungs.

            Now Jess finally sits up, her neck and hip screaming in protest. Nick’s hand drops to the steering wheel and he looks genuinely pleased to see her, as though he’d forgotten she was there and her remembered company delighted him. She snakes her hand to his leg and his fingers twine with hers. This is a new thing they’ve been trying out: hand-holding. It still feels strange, getting used to the feel of his hand in hers—it’s _Nick Miller’s thumb_ currently brushing gently over the side of her hand. And “gently” is not an adverb she would have ever anticipated applying to Nick Miller in any capacity.

            “Nice dream? What’re you smiling about, weirdo?” Nick’s got a pretty big grin going on to be calling out anyone on their smiling, but she lets it go. She’s been letting a lot of stuff go. She thinks it’s got something to do with the air in Mexico. Everything smells like the beach and warm tortillas and butter and metal buildings heated to scorching temperatures by the sun. It’s an intoxicating combination and it makes her feel like she can put up with anything, even stupid Nick Miller. Especially stupid Nick Miller.

            “Oh!” she says, disentangling her hand from his and climbing half into the backseat to find her knitting. “I need to get working on these while it’s still your turn to drive. Can you imagine how disappointed Schmidt and Winston would be if I came back with them some half-knitted hats?”

            “Jess, I can’t even believe you’re knitting them anything at all. It’s a million degrees outside, there’s no air conditioning, and to be completely honest, I’m pretty sure Schmidt and Winston couldn’t care less about whether or not they have newly-knitted hats made from fresh llama hair or whatever.”

            “Alpaca! It’s alpaca yarn! And they’re going to love them, trust me. Here, Winston’s is almost done.”

            She jams it down over his head before he can protest and admires her work. It’s too small for Nick—Winston’s head is so tiny—but the greens and blues are vibrant and it looks so fluffy and warm. The quality of yarn at the little roadside store really was incredible. The minute they had driven off she’d regretted not buying out the bent little old woman’s entire stock. She’d begged Nick to turn around and go back, but he had refused. Typical. He’d made up for it later, though, when he’d realized her pout wasn’t going away, making her wait in the car and then walking her out, his damp bandana used to blindfold her, and surprising her with a picnic. An honest to god _picnic_. He’d spread out the blanket they’d bought for when they couldn’t find a motel and everything.

            Nick is clawing at the hat like a wounded animal. “Oh, god, get it off me! It smells weird! Get it off me!”

            She settles back in her seat, feet propped up on the dash once again now that the feeling has returned to her legs, to fix the damage Nick has done to the hat. He actually has only unraveled a few of her stitches. She can pick them up no problem. “Cotton-Eyed Joe” is turned up once again and Jess finds herself singing under her breath as she counts stitches, “Where did you come from, where did you go…”

            It’s hard for Jess to resist a song that catchy, particularly when Nick is fist pumping in the driver’s seat beside her, bandana askew from the hat incident. A trickle of sweat drips from his cheek, catching on the open collar of his shirt.

 

            The sun is nearly down by the time they find a beach. The instant Jess opens her door she can hear the ocean waves’ distant roar, pulling and pushing at the sand, calling to her to cool her aching feet in its shallow waters. She clambers out of the car, joints creaking. Winton’s hat is finally complete, tassels and all. Schmidt’s only needs a few more rows before it’s bit enough, but that can wait until the sun comes back up. Nick has made it to the edge of the gravel, shoes already off and in one hand. The blanket is draped over his shoulder. He offers her his free hand.

            “Miss Night?”

            She can tell he immediately regrets it; Nick Miller still needs to be liquored up a bit before he’s comfortable with calling her pet names or feeling spontaneous enough to jump into the ocean.

            “Keep your shirt on, Pepperwood, I’m comin’,” she says, skipping the couple of steps needed to close the distance between them. “And you don’t exactly have to keep your shirt on, if you catch my drift.”

            “Such a dork. You sound like a Marx Brother.”

            “If memory serves, I didn’t write the material.”

            They swing their clasped hands between them as they walk toward the water’s edge. Every beach they’ve visited since they began their road trip has brought back to Jess’s mind the night when they took Nick to the beach so that he could jump in. She hopes beaches will always trigger the memory of that night for her. She thinks they will.

            Nick spreads out the blanket on a dune of sand a good distance from the waves, but close enough that they can still feel the cool spray on their skin.

            That first night they spent together on a beach, Nick gave Jess his extra jackets for her to use as a blanket. He sat beside her and she slept facing away from him. They had maintained a distinct space between their bodies.

            Now Nick lies back and Jess rests her head against his chest, wrapping her arms around him, Nick’s hand playing lazily in her hair. She crosses her leg over his.

            “Whatcha thinking about?” she murmurs sleepily, eyes closed, more than anything an attempt to stay awake in this hazy twilight—to stretch the moment out longer even though she knows she’s a goner.

            “You don’t think we should go home, do you?”

            “Eventually. I mean, we’ll _have_ to eventually.”

            “Not tonight.”

            “No way, Miller.”

            “Do you think we should find a motel?”

            Jess struggles to open her eyes and glances up at him. “What do you think?”

            “Yes, let’s find a motel.”

            They don’t move.


End file.
